Saturday, March 10, 2007

Banshee Baby to Angel Baby OR Kids Need Sleep

So it turns out that babies need to sleep! A couple weeks ago, our little zombie stopped sleeping all day long. In fact, she stopped sleeping during the day AT ALL. Oh, she might've taken a catnap or two on my lap, but nothing much more than a half an hour. Strangely enough, this is also when her little inner banshee made itself known. So I did some research. Is this normal behavior for a (then-)four-week-old baby? I did a Google search to find out. I took some sick comfort in the surprising number of horribly creative headlines of abuse and abandonment I found - she may be driving me nuts, but at least I haven't been tempted to use her as a weapon or put heroin in her milk or abandon her in an office building or. Apparently lots of people are driven nuts by surprisingly little babies. Not really any useful information, though.
Last week, we had an awful day on Friday - Chloe screamed quite literally all afternoon. Well, okay, maybe she took a couple brief breaks (to breathe). That evening, we went, with qualms, to a fundraising dinner. She slept through the whole thing, about five hours straight. Then she slept all night, in a couple more four- or five-hour streaks. Saturday, she was in a great mood! Hm. It clicked. The kid's been sleep-deprived.
The problem is that the baby books we have (and the on-line searches I've done) all say BLEAH to baby schedules. Instead, let the baby sleep whenver she wants! Let her eat whenever she wants! They don't address babies who don't seem to want to sleep so much. At all. Until last week, I'd put her down to sleep, she'd scream, I'd figure she wasn't tired after all, get tired of listening to her scream, and get her back up (to scream some more). As a result, it looks like her poor little head was spinning... so she screamed.
This week has been much better. I've found another source and have been putting her down for naps every three hours or so. She still doesn't always want to nap and often wakes up maybe thirty minutes later, but she's getting much more sleep than she had been and even on her worst days is much more bearable than she had been before.
Anyway - as a result of all this learning, we finally have some cute smiley pictures to share! Chloe has just been learning how to smile and has been making her very first almost-coos just in the last couple days. She's also beginning to find her fists to suck on a little more frequently, yay!
Awwww... is she smiling at Mommy? Nope - she really likes the CD tower.
Awwwww..... is she smiling at Daddy? Um, no... she also has a thing for the coffee table.
And, finally, a record of Chloe's first non-breastmilk experience. Mike decided that she needed to experience a Parm bar (delicious, I have to agree) while I stood by squawking, "Aaaaak! You can't feed ice cream to a five-week-old!" and Mike replied, "Why not? It's milk!" Despite my objections, she appears none worse for the wear. :)

4 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Meiks,

Thanks for sharing your baby experiences - the crying, the sleeping, the lack of sleeping, the smiling. She is so absolutely gorgeous. I can't wait to meet her... Meanwhile, my little one is asleep (even though 10 minutes ago a car drove by with someone blasting on a trumpet out the window...!?!?!) - and I should try to go to bed as well - given that we lose an hour of sleep tonight.

If you didn't find it yet, check out the sleep book by a guy named Marc Weissbluth. We found it helpful.

But again, the books can get confusing when you face up against the developing personality and peculiarities of your own kid: Zora will now do this thing where she takes maybe 2 or 3 catnaps a day, and just doesn't seem tired all day, and even though she's acting pleasant, we panic that she's about to go over the edge into total crabbiness. Then, the next day, she takes 4 hour naps. Hmmm....

Who plays a trumpet out of a window??? Sounds like you have a high school nearby... :)

So looking forward to the playdates!

For sleep, I've been relying mostly on websites so far, though I did just order a couple books. Thanks for the recommendation; I'll check him out. Right now she's sleeping (in her bassinet) in our closet... it's darker in there, so she doesn't have quite as much to look at! One semi-successful nap later I'm wondering if we've found a strategy that works. :)

hi! it's probably too late for you to notice this comment, but just the other day my mom was talking about my nephew and his strange refusal to nap during the day-- turns out that when a kid makes a developmental shift from one stage to the next, they often stay awake because their brains are so busy engaging with the new information. it could be something else, but so you know this kind of thing happens, and it passes, but you're probably going to see it at some point as she grows older. :)

About Me

On top of being a wife and full-contact parent to three young children, I am an advocate for livable communities and alternative transportation. That means working for communities that work for every member of the community, including those who are either unable or unwilling to drive. It's all about making our communities stronger.